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New English translation: 4th volume of Sartre’s Roads of Freedom

Here in the office, we’re all very excited to have received the first copies of The Last Chance – the first English translation of Sartre’s unfinished fourth volume of Roads of Freedom. You’ve only had to wait 30 years for an English edition!

We’ve had great feedback for the book so far; Professor Christine Daigle at Brock University, Canada, complimented translator Craig Vasey on his ‘concern for accuracy and respect for Sartre’s words.’ Staying true to the orginal Pleiade edition, ours reproduces the unpublished interview with Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s account of Sartre’s plans for the rest of the volume.

The Last Chance publishes tomorrow, so order your copy now to stay ahead of the crowd!

Here is the table of contents and, below that, two endorsements (copied from the publisher’s website):

“The publication of the fourth volume of Sartre’s Roads of Freedom is a key contribution to the field of Sartre studies. English-speaking readers will here have access for the first time to the sequel to what they thought was a trilogy. It is an important sequel, as translator Craig Vasey so aptly shows. In these pages, the roads of freedom take an interesting turn, unveiling Sartre’s own trajectory with regards to the concepts of freedom and commitment. Vasey’s translation makes these texts available with a concern for accuracy and respect for Sartre’s words. Further, this book complements Sartre’s manuscripts with a scholarly apparatus that makes it more than a mere translation. This is a scholarly edition of the fourth volume that will shed a new light on Sartre’s notion of freedom and how it ought to be pursued. A key reading for anyone interested in Sartre as a writer and/or philosopher.” – Professor Christine Daigle, Brock University, Canada

“The English speaking world has had to wait nearly thirty years before obtaining access to Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV. Therefore, Craig Vasey’s faithful translation represents an important contribution to a better and more complete understanding of Sartre’s fictional world. It will also help English speakers to situate more clearly his literary production in the context of his complete writings and illuminate the directions in which Sartre attempted to find solutions for his tortured protagonists to the vexing problems of freedom, friendship and fate in a bewildering universe dominated by vicious and hostile ideologies.” – Adrian van den Hoven, University of Windsor, Canada